the alt-right

^ Terry Goodkind right? Even where the author isn't a Randian, that style is pretty common - mooks being mown down by heroes, etc. Meanwhile the 'proper', 'serious' films and books are boring because they don't have swordfights and spaceships. So the hypothetical geek goes looking for more of the same sugar rush, they end up living on a diet of it, it ends up informing their perceptions of real life, idk? Especially if they don't see any violence in real life to get a reality check.

+ being part of a small core of 'fans' might lead naturally to liking the idea of a small elite who know what's up versus the blinkered masses?

The problem with all this is that last night I watched and enjoyed Predator and Predator 2 and as usual it's the old 'when I enjoy this stuff I know I'm indulging in silly sadistic jouissance but when they watch it ...'

I wonder if there's anything to the idea that some geeks watch genre movies (fantasy and sci-fi in the main) / tv/games/comics and get so wrapped up in them that, aside from dressing up as the characters, or doing other traditional geek culture things, they end up thinking the simplified ethics and/or philosophy in these tv shows and movies are substantial, and would/should work in real life? And if this has anything to do with this alt-right movement?

― Never changed username before (cardamon), Wednesday, 12 October 2016 23:35

I don't know if it's much different than regular action, war and cowboy films and games. Barring Kaiju and disaster films I've seen more superhero stories than anything that show cities being wrecked as if it's nothing.

True, although does it matter that action, war and cowboy movies don't have quite the same 'fan club' in-group thing going on that seems to come with sci-fi and fantasy? They strike me as more 'standard issue', common cultural touchstones I guess. No less wacky and prone to shoving right-wing ideas in your face, but they'll do it in a significantly different way?

(The other problem with all this is just how widespread the love for sci fi and games and all the rest of it really is, compared to how narrow it's traditionally assumed to be. That really does seem like a relic now considering the viewer figures for GoT and various genre blockbusters? Just because there's a self-identified geek culture which views itself as a weird minority doesn't mean it actually is.)

There are a lot of arguments that superheroes are more of a troubling construct and a lot of fantasy and science fiction can have similarly fascistic or entitled worldviews while war and cowboys are based on real situations, but you can probably present them just as badly. There's vigilante films which can be pretty nasty.
I heard the newest Mel Gibson film called "dadsploitation", the best genre name I've heard in years.

Cowboy stories do seem more politically self aware for decades though.

The kind of place where is almost always at least one guy on campus who goes about his daily business in a Gandalf cloak and staff

Going to go out on a limb and say it's not this guy. In fact, I'm bemused by eg Gamergate because these people are just not very good geeks - the usual morals of geek media is co-operation, working together, tolerance - the idea that it's all power fantasies is weird and/or out of date.

i think RAG is right that these "gamers" aren't real gamers. they're AAA gamers who think they're gamers. real gamers love all the recent indie stuff - even if a particular game isn't their bag no real gamer would complain that games are ruined atm.

aren't there like 5 threads about this already? i feel like this isn't a "real thread" about the "real alt-right"

no you're right no more gaming talk from me only neo-nazi meme talk from now on

i think RAG is right that these "gamers" aren't real gamers. they're AAA gamers who think they're gamers. real gamers love all the recent indie stuff - even if a particular game isn't their bag no real gamer would complain that games are ruined atm.

― Mordy

oh come on their position is that they're the _only_ real gamers and everybody else are "filthy casuals".

and tbh i think kickstarter is doing some pretty serious damage to games right now

I know this is getting off-topic but I'd like to hear about why kickstarter is damaging.

And I think some gamergaters are weeaboos and pretty hardcore into games.

pretty easy to make an argument that the bulk of indie games aren't serious/real games

not making that argument, but it's makeable

I know this is getting off-topic but I'd like to hear about why kickstarter is damaging.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

used to be you would make a game and then sell it. now you come up with a pitch and then you sell that, and you don't bother to actually finish making the game. i know most players don't get past the first couple hours of a game anyway, but even if i don't finish a game (i usually don't) i like to know that the game in question at least is finishable (if it's that kind of game).

I kinda like that this mixture of wild over-ambition, hucksterism and genuine craft exists but yeah most of it is not gonna be looked back on fondly

back towards the topic- one of the things that puzzles me about the alt-right is its hostility towards the existence of games they weren't going to play in the first place.

like, when that twin peaks ripoff game came out a couple weeks ago, a lot of people got super mad about it (or a few people got mad about it super loudly, hard to tell these days) because the pc was a black woman. this is ridiculous. is there anybody outside the margin of error who honestly enjoys playing "walking simulators" but simultaneously insists that their player character only ever be a white male?

I think they may have a "domino effect" concern, that's the nicest construction you could put on it.

asking for logic from these guys is a fool's errand tbh, but yeah as nv says their fear is basically that any game which isn't about bald white space marines shooting stuff helps the games industry get one step closer to producing nothing but entirely conflict-and-challenge-free games starring disabled black transgender socialists

gears of war 5: ceasefire

Save the Whales III

dude ecco the dolphin ruled and these dweebs need to stfu

CuckQuest 8: Trigger Happy

Now that I think about it there aren't many video games that star or feature libhomo characters or have libhomo themes.

though I guess "libfag" would probably be the proper alt right term

The entire concept of "real gamers" IS THE PROBLEM DUMMIES

There's no such thing

true

real gamers vote in the 90s pc gaming poll

unless they are not into 90s pc games, that is also of course cool

I think kickstarter has done some good things for games. A lot of developers have their heads up their asses and completely ignore the audience that made them big in the first place. A few of these high profile kickstarter games are basically like "capcom and konami won't pay for this but their old fans will"

Re: Spiked et al., O'Neill did write this recent piece critical of the alt right: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/hounding-leslie-jones-anti-pc-gone-mad/

kickstarter talk going a bit off topic yeah but i do think video games are relevant here since gamergate was such a major mobilizing moment for these ppl

I think kickstarter has done some good things for games. A lot of developers have their heads up their asses and completely ignore the audience that made them big in the first place. A few of these high profile kickstarter games are basically like "capcom and konami won't pay for this but their old fans will"

― Robert Adam Gilmour

i don't know i don't think "mighty no. 9" isn't exactly a vindication of this way of thinking.

and even if igavania turns out to be good, is it really a great triumph for kickstarter to provide funding for cookie-cutter sequels-in-all-but-name to formulaic game franchises? (note that i love the igavania games and if his new game is good i will probably buy it and play it.)

It's something good. It's better that they exist. There probably are far more innovative games but I don't know about them.

Kickstarter usually has to tap into an existing audience so most things will be quite familiar.

i also think that the kickstarter model has been very misleading to plenty of people who have pledged, and for a lot of us pledging has been a misleading and disappointing experience. we love terraria and pledged to starbound, because we were suckered by the advertising copy and caught up in the mass excitement the kickstarter generated. theoretically this game has been "successful" in that it's delivered more or less what it's promised, but the game isn't very well balanced and, consequently, isn't very much fun to play.

individual gamers just don't have good enough judgment to determine whether a game is worth funding or not, and by collecting the money directly from gamers before making the game the people who run these kickstarters are actually losing out on quality feedback on how to make the game better. i'm not saying that process always works in big gaming companies - one need only look at the barely mitigated disaster that has been the sonic series for most of the last 25 years - but the process isn't, in most cases, producing better games or more innovative games than the AAA industry, and is making many gamers disillusioned and more selective about what gaming risks they're willing to take. i don't see that as a good thing.

It's early days still and there's hundreds of them. I'm sure plenty of them are fine but most are very low budget.

Just explained the meaning of cuckservative to some idiot Orthodox Jew on fb who clearly did not get the memo on who alt righters are referring to when they say the country has been sold out. His brother in law texted me to thank me. Not the first person to text me this election season for sonning their moron relatives.

i could not imagine how to carry on such a conversation.

Ha, getting email is certainly a validating reaction.

Also, back to an earlier point, Kickstarter isn't the reason for games not being finished; that shit is entirely due to Early Access*

*excepting whatever Star Citizen is now considered.

is vaporware still a term in use?

Not as much, due to the similar -sounding musical genre gaining popularity

Do you guys read We Hunted the Mammoth? It's where I get my daily alt-right hatefeed tempered with a bit of levity so I don't actually kill myself.

My wife reads it faithfully. She loves to keep tabs on what these pieces of shit are up to l. She first told me about the whole red pill thing like 3 years ago.

That site also spun-off the similarly amusing Tumblr feed Confused Cats Against Feminism

http://confusedcatsagainstfeminism.tumblr.com

A few of these high profile kickstarter games are basically like "capcom and konami won't pay for this but their old fans will"

Aye but as rushomancy says, Capcom and Konami are right here.

There's definitely a thread in Gamergate of "Hi there X we understand that you are a professional in your job but as a collection of straight white men we are an unparalleled resource of objectivity and we are concerned that you have overlooked this" - X is usually journalists or police or the FBI investigating Anita Sarkeesian's harassment but "games developers who want to make something other than what we want them to" fits as well.

It's tied up with Real Gamers as well - they don't actually exist except as an idea of who games are made for - some people like to identify with them as a cultural force (larger than Hollywood, you know) and then get massively entitled about their assumed power.

Both these points extend pretty smoothly out from GG to the thread's topic, of course.

do you guys get recommended racist crap when watching completely random videos on youtube? like i was watching some videos about old EM pinball machines and all of a sudden youtube is recommending that i watch videos that will "tell me the truth about the jews". is it just that youtube can't handle recommendations based on videos with low view counts or something?